Cai Brown, The Card Tower Master
by Maxie Fonseca
Summary: Cai Brown... card tower master extrordinaire? Or not. Join Remus, James, Sirius, Lily, and the rest of the gang in deciding what Cai's profession will be when she leaves Hogwarts.


_Ashey... this is all your idea xP_

_anyawy... a bit of randomness that involves the Marauders... heh xD_

_Disclaimer: What you recognize from JKR, she owns. What youi recognize from me, I like to think I own. and Ashey owns the card tower._

_And review, please! _

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Cai Brown settled into the window seat with a dramatic sigh. The sky wouldn't stop pouring buckets, and it meant that quidditch practice was cancelled, due to the fact that Lily had had a fit when they had last had practice in the rain (All right, it might have been snow) and everyone had gotten colds.

Cai smiled. Lily might have insisted that it was only because she was afraid her best friend would die of a cold, and it must be said that Cai, when she got sick, was badly sick, but Cai would like to think it was because her silly red-headed friend was desperately in love with a certain messy haired quidditch captain, and she could not bare to seem him ill.

Both the aforementioned settled in their respective spots on the window seat, forcing Cai to actually sit up and not lie down. However, as Sirius Black tried to find a spot on the seat, followed by their friend Ashton Fitch, Cai decided the floor might be more comfortable, and a whole lot more spacious. She rolled across the thick carpet until she came to a stop at the feet of their friend, Remus Lupin.

"Graceful," He remarked with a raised eyebrow, and Cai grinned.

"You can see why I'm not a ballerina," She replied, and after pulling down a big squashy pillow from an armchair, settled on it, leaning her head against the leg of the chair. Remus just shook his head, and went back to the homework he was doing, while Peter Pettigrew looked over his shoulder, trying to figure out why he could not, for the life of him, figure out the answer to question 4, subsection D. Stephanie Jones sat in another chair, reading quietly. Although, if one looked closely, she was trying not to break out into hysterical laughter at her book, which Cai knew was charmed to play muggle movies such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Cai looked back to her former spot, the window seat. James and Lily were sitting at opposite ends of the seat, with Sirius and Ash squished in the middle. The former seemed to loathe the fact that they were separated, or so Cai thought, while the latter seemed to enjoy their current position. Which was basically Ash sitting on Sirius' lap.

She shook her head slightly and smiled. Ash had been in love with Sirius for years, shown by many er… inappropriate diary entries and lovestruck moments, and he had finally realized that his feelings were more than that of a friend's. As a result, they had started going out a few weeks prior. Now it was just up to Lily and James to finally realize their hidden feelings, and ride off on a broomstick into the sunset.

Cai shook her head again. It was time to stop reading those wizarding romance novels. She had better switch to muggle ones. They were much more realistic: No one was taking Polyjuice Potion to find their one true love, who seemed to hate them but carried on a friendship with their best friend, and…

_Well, maybe James should start reading these novels_, Cai though with a grin. It explains his situation perfectly.

Remus poking her shoulder brought her out of her musings. "Bored?" He asked quietly, and she nodded. He proceeded to pull out her bag seemingly from nowhere, and place it in front of her. "Well, then do your homework!" He crowed.

Cai shook her head and pleaded with him, all the while enjoying their argument. Remus only partly tried to get the Marauders to obey, but he made sure that Cai at least did her homework. For that she was grateful, for it meant that she passed most of her classes with flying colors. However, and she was reminded by the textbook sticking out of her bag, she had a Potions exam the next day, and Potions was her worst subject.

"Aw, Remy… please? No potions!" Remus shook his head, and dangled the book in front of her.

"You have nothing else to do, and you need to pass Potions to become an auror."

She shook her head. "What if I don't want to be an auror?" Remus looked at her strangely.

"You've wanted to be an auror since third year. What else would you want to be?" She pondered that.

"Well, I was thinking of a professional quidditch player." Remus rolled his eyes.

"Cai," He pointed out, "You decided against that when you found out you would have to get up for practice at 5. Auror training doesn't start until 7, and you decided that the extra few hours of sleep was worth it."

"Er… I want to work in Zonko's!" At another look from Remus, she started listing all the professions she could think of that would have nothing to do with her grade in Potions. "I want to be a broomstick tester! A gardener! A bricklayer! A plumder!"

"A plumber," Lily interjected, and Cai shrugged.

"Whatever. And I dunno what those last two were, read it in one of my muggle novels. Anyway… An auror! Oh bullocks, that's what I'm against. A child taking care of person thingummy!"

"Cai, sorry to say, but no sane parent would ever trust you with their children."

"Eh, good point there. Er… a card tower master!"

"A what?"

Cai grinned enthusiastically. "A card tower master! You heard me!"

"And… what exactly does a card tower master do?" Stephanie asked, partly absorbed in her 'book', but interested by this conversation.

Cai shrugged. "How should I know?" She asked. "I'll look in the library later."

Remus rolled his eyes again, a recurring habit when one was speaking with Cai. "I would presume that a card tower master," He said, "Would have to make card towers."

"Remus, have I ever told you you were a genius?" Cai asked. He chuckled.

"No," He admitted, "But you have told me I am a know-it-all."

Cai grinned as she remembered the first time she had said that.

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_"It's not really the sky," a somewhat short, brown-haired boy said softly to his neighbor, a boy tall for his age with messy black hair and wire-framed glasses. "It's just been bewitched to look like that. I read it in Hogwarts, A History."_

_Cai rolled her eyes, and whispered loudly to Lily, "Honestly, who reads Hogwarts, A History? Know-it-all. That must be the most boring book in the world. Only boring people would read it. Or Ravenclaw's. Honestly, I can't understand why anyone would even crack open a textbook before they came here. The most boring material, from what I saw. And Potions! Abysmal! I mean-" She broke off as she caught Lily's glare, and asked slowly, "So… I gather you read Hogwarts, A History? And probably read your textbooks… oops." Looking at the group around her, she caught a few glares from the crowd. "So… I assume you all have read the blasted book?" They nodded, and Cai turned to a boy next to her with long black hair and piercing gray eyes._

_"So," She said nervously, "How about those Cannons?"_

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"But you forgave me, Remy-whemy, because you loooooooove me!" She said piteously, wringing her hands. Remus laughed it off with a wave, and went back to reading.

"Only because Lily threatened to hex me, and for a muggle-born she knew a surprising amount of hexes, shown by the time that Sirius pulled her hair and called her carrot-top." Cai shook her head.

"You know you love me, Remy," She said jokingly, but at that statement both Sirius and James whipped their heads around.

"Rem loves Cai?" Sirius asked excitedly, and she rolled her eyes. After he and Ash had gotten together, he had been plotting for Remus and Peter to get together with the available two girls of the group. After Stephanie had flat out refused to go out with Peter, and it was found out that the little man already had a girlfriend, Sirius shifted his attention to Remus and Cai. James had picked up on his game, and the two were egging on everything that Remus and Cai were saying.

Both Cai and Remus ignored them, however, and after a few moments Sirius and James went back to what they were doing: Sirius, absentmindedly patting Ash's head, for some odd reason, and James, who was most likely thinking of ways to get Lily to go out with him.

"So, Rem," Cai said slowly. "Got any cards? And not muggle cards. I want Exploding Snap cards."

Remus, it was safe to say, looked a smidge frightened. "Ex-exploding Snap cards?" He repeated, and Cai nodded.

"What else would I use?" She asked.

"I have a pack!" Peter said loudly, and everyone's heads turned to him.

"No no no no no," Remus, Lily, and Ash chanted, while Sirius, James, and Stephanie egged him on. Cai eagerly grabbed the offered pack of cards, and happily settled down in front of the coffee table.

"This way," She announced, "I can tell mum that I have my whole life planned out for me. I'll be a card tower master, traveling the world, building card towers in my wake." She winked, and added, "And she'll be royally pissed, which is always a benefit."

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An hour or so later, Cai was found in the same spot, working on building a second layer to the tower. Remus, in an attempt to keep everyone else in the common room whole and in one piece, had been blowing down the tower before it got too big, and Cai had not realized this yet.

_Cai, the card tower master_, She thought happily to herself. _It even sounds spiffy. I should have my own theme song. It could go…_ "I'm Cai, the card tower master!" She sang out loud, and everyone looked at her strangely. Well, more strangely then they would look at her normally, for at the moment she was waving back and forth while adding a second level onto a disappearing card tower and singing about herself.

"I need a theme song," She offered as an explanation, and everyone just went back to their business.

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As everyone left for dinner, Remus tapped Cai's shoulder gently, and then harder, seeing as she didn't respond.

"What, Remy?" She asked.

"It's dinner time, Cai," He told her. "Everyone's leaving."

"Don't worry," She insisted. "I have to finish this so I can tell my mum and darling Minnie that I have my life planned out, and I that my Potions grade won't matter because a card tower master doesn't need Potions." Remus rolled his eyes again and just went down to dinner.

As he settled into a seat next to James and across from Peter, he was reminded of the fact that Cai was slightly crazy by the lack of laughter at the table. She could find almost anything to be hilarious, and prompted many discussions about what was more funny (The current one being whether Minnie was a better nickname than Slug-a-roo).

After dinner, they all filed into the common room, where Cai was diligently working on the tower, which had reached its fourth level.

"Go to sleep, Cai," Stephanie, Ash, and Lily pleaded, but she wouldn't listen. Remus, James, and Sirius each tried to pick her up and bring her to her dormitory, but she just held on to the chair she had relocated to for dear life. Giving up, Remus transfigured a nearby sheet of paper into a blanket, and wrapped it around her shoulders before patting her head (He was oddly reminded of petting Sirius' head the exact same way the first time he had transformed into his animagus form) and walking up the stairs.

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A sleepy-eyed bunch of Marauders ambled down their dormitory steps and entered the common room, settling themselves around a diligently working Cai. The girls followed soon after, but Cai took no notice of them. She had a smudge of ink on her nose, and Remus questioned her about this.

"I had to draw plans," She informed them, and gestured to the stack of parchment next to her. Looking through them, Remus noticed plans for a variety of card towers, including one of Hogwarts.

"Er, how do you plan to do this?" He asked, and the others nodded. Cai shrugged.

"I dunno," She said, "I figured that when I'm a card tower master, I'll know enough." They all sighed at the absurdity of this, but since Cai was their friend they decided not to remark on it.

Well, most of them decided not to remark on it.

"Cai, this is absurd," Lily Evans said loudly, and each of the Marauders groaned and covered their ears.

"Not so loud, Flower," James said pleadingly, "We just woke up." Lily ruffled his hair and continued talking, although at a noticeably softer level.

"Cai, really, this is insane. You can't think that you can do this for life. You'll be bored within five minutes."

Cai shook her head. "Nuh uh," She said, still concentrating on the tower, "I've been working on this for at least 12 hours. If someone," Here she glared at Remus, "hadn't been knocking down my tower in the beginning, I might be done."

Remus grinned sheepishly as Lily glared at him, and decided to cheer Cai on. "Come on, Cai, you're almost done. Just one more level, and you'll be a master!" Cai grinned, and proceeded to pull out three cards from the deck. She placed the first carefully on the top of the tower, and was leaning the last two together when-

BOOM!

As the smoke cleared from around Cai, the inhabitants of the common room came out from their hiding spots. Cai was perched on the chair, arms still outstretched, holding one card in one hand, the other having exploded and taken the entire tower down with it. With a sigh, she fell into the chair, and pulled out a piece of parchment.

"Well," She said somewhat cheerfully, "I guess I'm as bad as being a card tower master as I am at Potions. What was next on the list?"

The group laughed nervously as they looked at Cai's list, somewhat impressed with what it contained:

-Card Tower Master

-Dragon Tamer

-Gardener, Bricklayer, or Plumder

"It's a plumber," Lily said again, but the rest kept reading.

-Quidditch Player

-Childcare person

"Again, Cai, no sane parent would trust you with their children," Remus reminded her.

-Minister of Magic

-Robes designer

-Broomstick tester

At this point her list seemed to repeat itself twice. The group looked at Cai inquisitively, and she sighed.

"Or I could just become an auror, like planned. But then I would need a better Potions grade… and bullocks, we have that test today! Oy, Remy, can I borrow your notes?"

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_So... er... review! Heh xD_

_And… that's it xD Heh, just some randomness, courtesy of Ashey xD_


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